I want to go back to the start. When we were not dying embers; when we blazed. When my chosen was still larger than life. When his energy overwhelmed me with its dizzy dance, intricate and puzzled. When I was the missing piece he coveted. The time before this time. Before I was left to stoke the fire of our union with my last breath.

I don’t know why I agreed to come to the cabin. “One last try,” he’d said. “So we can escape the noise of work and our lives, and just be the two of us, together.” 

To try to rekindle what we let die a long time ago, I thought. Yet I came. Fading embers and all.

*

Nobody tells you how time steals hearts. How she exchanges love’s salvation for cages built upon misconstructions of your words, lies woven by your chosen out of your own mistakes. Of aches too bright to smother. Drop and roll, drop and roll. No one can prepare for love’s vacillating demands. No matter how hard you yearn for days past or try to repaint your union’s canvas with compassion’s tears – you will burn.

Here at our beloved cabin, in our new now, it doesn’t feel like the escape it once was for us. We were married here, a beautiful ceremony with just our closest family and friends. The woods surrounding us filled our lungs with hope and seemed to offer endless opportunities. We couldn’t imagine choosing to gift anyone else our future. 

*

Nobody tells you how time births familiarity. So she can breathe disdain to darken your chosen’s eyes. How all that was once quirky and endearing within you will become twisted and grating in their mind. How all that makes you unique will become something to escape, the you of you forgotten until they no longer want to help you remember. Until you are left alone with four walls, wondering where all the happy noise went. 

My chosen enters the cabin, his strong arms overloaded with freshly cut logs. His footsteps disturb the fresh snowflakes; they dance angrily between us, taunting ghosts whispering of misunderstandings too entrenched to be forgiven. Quarrels that can only be resolved by being forgotten. 

Sadly, neither of us remembers how to forget.

*

I want to go back to the start. When I was still the chance for something to blind him to the dark. When I was the new hope. Transparent, floating, weightless. When I was me, and me was seen. Before contempt erased me in my chosen’s eyes. When I still believed he’d cherish my offerings. When submission was not required. 

The time before this time. When we preferred eyes wide open to smiling our acceptance over this — this angry, murky blindness that drowns out all cries and reason. That makes me feel small. That makes me forget what made me special. When I was still home in love’s ache and not only trying to sustain her flickering ashes. When my chosen one did not whittle away so diligently, making this smaller and smaller me.

I offer him a smile as heavy as the air between us, then turn to push the fire’s embers with the poker I’ve been clutching too tightly in my hand ever since he left. I’m uncertain if this act is in anticipation of the fuel he’s gathered to reignite the fire, or out of jealousy. 

My heart envies the embers. I wonder if I should tell him why.